Milestones: 1994

Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act extends to employers with 15 or more employees (between July 26, 1992 and July 26, 1994 only employers with 25 or more employees were covered). EEOC conducts outreach efforts to alert the public and media of this expanded coverage.

The Commission approves contracting with state and local Fair Employment Practice Agencies (FEPAs) for the first time to process dual filed Americans with Disabilities Act charges. This eliminates the possibility that respondents will be subject to two different investigations when a charging party files a disability charge with a FEPA and/or EEOC.

EEOC issues comprehensive guidance on disability-related pre-employment inquiries and medical exams explaining what is lawful to ask applicants seeking employment. Unlike other statutes which EEOC enforces, the Americans with Disabilities Act explicitly prohibits certain types of questions and examinations before an employer makes a conditional job offer to an applicant.

Over 91,000 charges are filed with EEOC the most in its history and as a result EEOC's inventory of charges awaiting investigation rises to approximately 100,000.

In only its second full year of enforcement, disability related charges constitute 20.7 percent of all charges filed with the agency.

Chairman Gilbert F. Casellas

President Bill Clinton nominates and the Senate confirms Gilbert F. Casellas to be the first Hispanic American Chairman of EEOC. Casellas, like EEOC's second Chairman, Stephen Shulman, twenty years earlier, has most recently served as the General Counsel of the U.S. Air Force.

Next: 1995